


Where We Fell Apart

by sweetdreamsaremadeoffish



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gang World, Cliche, F/F, Heavy Angst, I Don't Even Know, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I'm Sorry, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Manipulation, Mild Sexual Content, Sad, Sad Ending, What Have I Done
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-10-06 07:22:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17341076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetdreamsaremadeoffish/pseuds/sweetdreamsaremadeoffish
Summary: Erin knows she shouldn't have done a lot of the things she did, and Jillian Holtzmann is at the top of that list.





	Where We Fell Apart

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry.  
> It's a questionable decision, I know, to respond to such a sweet welcome (a thousand thanks for the sweet comments) with such cruelty to these poor kids.
> 
> I have no excuses, only an advisory:  
> Strap on your angst goggles and brace yourself. It's going to be a rough ride.

Erin knows she shouldn't have done a lot of the things she did, and Jillian Holtzmann is at the top of that list.

Sometimes Erin wonders what they could've become had the cards fallen in their favor, if they could have built something real. She never lets it go on too long, though. If she does, she drowns in memories, recalling things that should remain buried until they collect and drift aimlessly on the surface of her mind like oil, dark and deadly.

But mostly, she’s ravaged by unforgiving, unrelenting guilt.

 

She remembers that first night crisply as the fierce highway wind from all those years ago. She doesn't remember why they brought her to the party. There was no real reason to. If anything she was an unnecessary risk, taken on a whim. They had known what kind of operation it would be, that there would be more liability than benefit to her presence, and yet they'd still brought her along, draped in diamonds, silver dress slithering at her heels when she walked.

Beautiful, but highly impractical.

She was an object that night. Something to be admired. Those nights were easier. She didn't have to do much, just lay a lazily seductive smile across her lips, laugh, and be lovely. She wasn't expected to lie beneath anyone on those nights, since Twist always drank himself under the table, even if there was a job to do, and slept like a baby until late the following afternoon.

On those nights, she could imagine she was free.

 

Glasses of champagne are threaded into the fingers of everyone at the table. Erin is floating on a sparkling buzz that has loosened her. Not her lips, she's learned never to allow that, but her body isn’t electric with tension. It's one of a handful of small miracles tonight.

She even lets one of the guys, Grant, wrap an arm around her waist and lets his hands wander where they will while she pretends they’re affectionate instead of invasive. Her life is composed mostly of pretending these days, often because the lines between real and imaginary have blurred over the years. She knows that it's a defense mechanism, trying to preserve what's left of the woman she was. Erin can hardly remember anything about that woman, though, except that she ran away.

There's music beating in the walls, the floor, the ceiling. People there use it as a camouflage for their illegal games, deals, and schemes. And the occasional scheme gone wrong. This night is an occasion for a multitude of reasons, but it's marked as such by one of those failed schemes.

One moment, she's just a woman, lightly drunk and giggly on a man's arm as he attempts to impress her with his luck. The next, a pair of warning shots echo somewhere behind her and Grant is grabbing her roughly and they're running for the doors. She hears the pounding of the rest of the gang behind them, their feet falling flat and heavy on the marble floor of the casino. A crack echoes sickeningly as someone's bone makes violent contact with the briefcase in someone else's hand, and Erin realizes simultaneously that one of her stiletto heels has snapped. She stumbles and falls into a man dressed in black who must be one of them since he carries her without question into the waiting desert air.

A sleek black car swerves to a stop in front of the grand doors, and Erin is dumped unceremoniously into the back. Twist’s liquor-limp body follows, crushing her against the window as the boys pile in.

“Drive!”

Erin can't see who's yelled it, can't see anything actually, but doors are slamming and the engine is revving and they're bolting off into the night. The adrenaline reminds her for an instant what brought her there, a flickering candle in a barren wasteland.

 

They drive for a few of hours until it’s decided that they're far enough away. There's a filthy little motel off the next exit, and Erin is left in the car while everyone else goes inside to check in. Everyone except the driver and the remains of Twist, snoring in the backseat. She has shoved him into the other wall, reveling in the momentary revenge. It merits celebration. Well, that and they're still alive. 

“Allan,” she spits in the direction of the driver as she climbs into the passenger seat, “Give a girl a cigarette.”

Ten years have taught her well. She knows all too well that the only way to survive this life is to be tough. She's fought her way into a detached, cold shell that makes her an unreachable object of fascination.

Her closest acquaintance is their getaway driver, Al, if only because they're both from New York. In this world, that's enough. He won't help her--he's not that kind of acquaintance--but they understand each other. The rest of the “team” is a collection of guys from L.A. and Chicago. Al is marginally bearable, at least. And he supplies her with cigarettes from time to time. She'd quit soon after she'd started in college, but now they're delicacies, souvenirs from her past.

Erin holds out her hand but receives no cigarette. An unfamiliar throat clears itself, and she realizes abruptly that Al is not beside her.

It's a young woman. Too young, really, with wide, innocent eyes behind owlish glasses sitting behind the wheel. She smiles and suddenly it's very hard for Erin to breathe. She doesn't even know her name, but this is one of the things that made her want to stay, one of the things she misses more than she'd expected.

“I’m Holtzmann,” the miracle is saying, “My friends call me Holtz. But you can call me Jay. If you want.”

From no name to three in as many seconds. Erin’s world is tilting into the dashboard.  
She should say something, she thinks. Introduce herself.

“I'm--”

“Erin, Holtzmann, come on!”

‘Holtzmann’ hops out of the car, slides across the hood, and opens Erin's door with a low bow, offering her small porcelain hand to help the other woman. Erin takes it with slight hesitation and steps gingerly onto the pavement, a train of silver following.

“M’lady,” Holtzmann offers her elbow next, and it makes Erin brave. She dares to play the part, shifting her arm into place as they enter the motel’s lobby together.

The guys are drawing lots for ‘Twist Duty’, and if the woman at the front desk cares that they're checking in this late without a reservation, or that they're paying with obvious blood money, she certainly doesn't show it as she hands them their keys. Erin manages to snatch one and, with it, the power to choose her roommate. She gives Holtz a questioning look.

She's shared with every one of the others before. She knows who snores, who gropes when they think she's asleep, who gropes while she's awake, and a whispering, nearly forgotten corner of her parched heart is growing stronger with every minute in this impossible woman's presence.

Jay nods with a grin, and jingles the car keys.

When Jay and Louie--who drew the shortest straw--head back out to the car, Erin grabs Grant by his sleeve and pulls him into an alcove off the main lobby, away from where the other men are cracking crude jokes. Grant smirks and leans in.

Erin slaps him.

“What the hell?!”

“What do you mean, ‘what the hell’?” She hisses, “Who the fuck is this girl?”

“Holtzmann?”

“Are there other strange women here that I'm unaware of?”

“Jesus, you can take that stick outta your ass. She's Twist’s hire.”

She waits.

Nothing.

“And…?”

“And nothing. Her uncle is a heavyweight in New York, I guess. He said we'd keep her outta trouble.”

Erin crosses her arms, leaning against the gritty grey wall behind her.  
“What happened to Al?”

“Dead.”

She doesn't flinch.

“Do I want to know?”

“Let's just say it involved the Chinese mafia and a handful of dick moves.”

It’s almost 3 AM. Holtz walks back into the lobby, a duct-taped duffle bag slung across her back, laughing loudly at one of Louie’s terrible jokes. Twist is hanging off the side of Louie’s jacket, and Erin stems the urge to give him a black eye.

He won't remember where it came from when he wakes up tomorrow, and he’ll chalk it up to some bar fight or another. It would be so easy.

But new eyes, fresh and deep as the sea, find hers again, and she decides it's not worth it.

They split up.

She hopes every night that sleep will mellow them. That the bruises and brokenness will soften one day, that some instant of inexplicable kindness will liberate her, that she might finally be able to go home, that the light at the end of this tunnel is real, not a mirage of desperate fantasy. That she might have a chance.

Every morning she is disappointed.

 

Erin falls backward onto the bed, writhing under warm, wanton hands.

“Why Jay?” She gasps between fevered kisses.

“Jillian,” Kiss. “My name--” Kiss, kiss. “--is--” Kiss. “Jillian.”

She hums into Jillian’s wet, pink mouth, thinking of other wet, pink things and tearing at layers of vest and shirt and barriers to get to the skin she needs now.

“I barely know you,” she sighs as Jillian’s lips glide down the curve of her neck, her tongue running along Erin's collarbone, “But I've missed you.”

Jillian meets her eyes in the half-light, and there's a sadness in them Erin hadn't seen before. Maybe she understands? But how could she?

There's no time to explain.

Erin slides her hands under Jillian’s shirt, parting the two halves, buttons popping with no regard to the consequences.

It's the first time in ten years that anyone has brought her screams of ecstasy, and Jillian’s golden mane looks like a halo when she's laid out over the bone white pillows. An angel.

 

Just as the sun is rising, Jillian’s silhouette stands in the thin doorway of the bathroom, fluorescent light thickened by a murky green tinge clinging to the shadowed edges of her form, and Erin is struck by the contrast between her lover’s stark clarity and the ambient filminess of the surrounding air. As if she's the only point of stillness, of focus, in the entire world. She puts everything into perspective, simply by being there. She is the eye of life's hurricane.

Erin already knows she's leaving. She has to, or this life will kill her. She knows she’s running away from it all and never looking back. Soon, very soon.

But in this moment, watching an angel with bedhead and dark circles under those ocean eyes stand perfectly holy in the haze of the early morning, she wishes she could take Jillian with her.

**Author's Note:**

> As you can probably tell, I know nothing about mobs/gangs, and this is just going to get worse… before it gets worse. This fic is heinously short on redemption arcs and happy endings.
> 
> I'm working on some sweet, fluffy stuff that I hope will balance out this monstrosity at some point.
> 
> Until Chapter Two.  
> Love, Ruby


End file.
